Thank you for still being here after I've been gone these, well, it looks like four weeks altogether. And yeah, of course being at Johanneshof is in very many ways just like being here. That's the same kind of, what word, groove. I do kin-hin there, I do kin-hin here. And kin-hin is breath and body and walking with others. So I establish a kind of groove. I don't know a better word. Groove. There and here. And then I have to get in this airplane. And you know the celestial rhythms that movements that we observe have been observed since human history.

[01:16]

You look at the Sun, in relationship to the zodiac, the constellations behind it, moves about a degree a day. No one's ever been able to get outside that until jet airplanes. And beavers, it sounds like I'm talking about what? Beavers, anyway, have a kind of free-running rhythm. They can swim under the ice in the dark and keep their, without any outer cues, And sometimes I feel like inside we leave our beaver behind back in Europe when I flew here. And it's still swimming under the ice in Europe. But I have to find, get settled back here with you. And I've been speaking, of course, as I mentioned last night at the meal.

[02:30]

Meal is a word related to moon and measure and menses and so forth. Assumed rhythms. I've been speaking about the Abhidharma in Europe most recently. And the basic view of Buddhism is to know our, to explore our experienced world. First of all, at least, the world as we experience, our experienced world, And what the Abhidharma brings particularly to this concept, which is the basis of everything in Buddhism, is that in our experienced world is the path.

[03:34]

And that's not an obvious conclusion. And the fullness of this conclusion took some hundreds of years to come to after the historical... Buddha's death, that our experienced, within our experienced world, our experienced world is our path. Heaven and earth and I have the same root. Famous colon says, heaven and earth and I have the same root. Myriad things and I have the same body. Yeah, now we can use statements like that from the teachings to kind of, you know, find some kind of conceptual territory within this experienced world. Yeah, and try on.

[04:38]

In your sense of an experienced world, do heaven and earth and I, heaven isn't a Christian idea of heaven, it's upward inclusiveness, something like that. Share the same root. And myriad things and I share the same body. And Nanchuan, when this statement was made to him, quoting St. Zhao, Nanchuan said, as you all know probably, People nowadays see this flower, perhaps a flower poking up through the snow. Already crocuses are coming up in the middle of the grass here and there. People today see this flower as if it were, as if they were in a dream.

[05:41]

Now one way to practice with the four elements, the four elements which are, you know, earth, water, fire and air, which are common in Western culture, traditional culture and Asian traditional culture. But they're not so much ingredients as activities. And so, you know, if you practice with these four elements, I think of them as the four arrows, that earth is solidity, but earth is an inward arrow. So you, you know, again, it's, what can I say? It's an activity. It's a, it's a concept which you make use of.

[06:55]

And I make use of it as an arrow. So getting off the plane in Denver or something, well, how are the four elements doing in this situation? And the four elements are important in both Western and Asian culture because they're what we share with everything. So it's not so much defining ourselves as a separate person, but as just four elements like everything else. And now these four elements are in a different circadian, rhythmic context. 24-hour cycle rhythms, circadian. In our two Buddhas here, strangely, traditionally known, the earth-touching gesture of Shakyamuni is the left hand. And this other statue, I presume, was on two sides of a larger statue in Cambodia, my guess, has the earth-touching gesture.

[08:03]

It's the only statue I've ever seen that way on the right. So we've got both sides covered here. in the senda. But the earth touching gesture is also Akshobhya Buddha. The Buddha rooted in the solidity of how things are. Another concept. Rooted in the solidity of how things are and so does not compare him or herself to others. Doesn't get angry. Or you're on the way to Akshobhya Buddha, you might get angry, but you don't take it seriously. Because your reference point is this earth-touching gesture. So the earth element, you feel your solidity, the solidity that's this

[09:07]

an aspect of everything. Everything is in place. So it's an inward turning arrow. And water? Water is fluidity and stillness. So water you can practice with as a downward turning arrow. And feel your Stillness. I mean, you don't have to be getting off an airplane. You can do it in zazen. When you first wake up, when you get up in the morning, you establish yourself in the four elements. I get off the plane and people are trying to get past me. What are you doing? I'm establishing myself in the four elements. No, I don't do that. So there's a downward turning arrow you can feel.

[10:11]

And then fire is something like motility or spontaneous movement that arises from the body. This is an arrow you have to wait for. That's something you can do. It's spontaneous movement, images. The word motility means something. One of its meanings is images that arise from the movements of the body spontaneously. So fire is, I think, best accessed in us, our experience as motility. This is an upward turning arrow that you wait for. And then air. Air is space. Actualized space, something like that. And that's an arrow that is both outward and inward.

[11:15]

It's a folding out and a folding in. And usually when you establish yourself in the... No, you don't establish yourself. You establish something more universal than the self. In the four elements, usually one starts with the earth element, solidity. Feel a kind of solidity. This immovability too, that's the root of this, one of these five Buddhas, another teaching, but Akshobhya is this imperturbability or solidity. That's this earth-touching gesture of Shakyamuni, where heaven and earth and I share the same root, myriad things and I share the same body.

[12:19]

The flower, we shouldn't. The flower is not seen in a dream. We don't see, another koan says, this great earth, mountains, rivers, mountains are not seen as if in a mirror. Not seen as if in a mirror. This is also the practice of establishing this experienced reality, experienced existence in the four elements. It actually helps getting over a jet lag quicker. I've tried it with doing it and without doing it. So there's no need to get angry, because you're not making outer comparisons.

[13:27]

It's a returning to the source, finding a source in the four elements, a basis. inward turning arrow of solidity, the downward arrow of stillness and fluidity, the upward arrow that you wait for, of spontaneous movement, what to do. You're not thinking about what to do. You're opening yourself to a spontaneous movement. And then folding out and folding in. Experience space, not space as an envelope concept, but how we actually experience presence. Now I find the Abhidharma quite useful for definitions.

[14:34]

You know, sometimes I use it that way. And if you haven't studied the Abhidharma, I would suggest you do if you want to really make use of the teachings of Buddhism. Kumarajiva, who basically taught, I mean, he's such a major figure in China. I mean, it's like he taught China much of its culture, its philosophy, its philology. working with his huge translation teams, trying to bring Indian ideas into China and developing Chinese concepts so Indian concepts could flow together. Kumar Jiva says, I cannot teach Buddhism in China until people understand the Abhidharma. And the Abhidharma is the summation of the Theravada and early Hinayana Buddhist and the opening the basis of later Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, Zen.

[15:39]

Anyway, if you look up a word like faith, what does faith mean? Because faith occurs all the time in the Abhidharma. We have a kind of, we may have a kind of negative attitude towards faith, particularly when we see it as belief. But faith in The Abhidhara is clarifying trust. The trust that lets you set forth. There's an example like in a flood, you're trying to find dry land. The faith that allows you to set forth to find dry land. And in the etymology, I often find, as you know, The etymology of words, yeah, allows us to use the words in ways that often works much better in Buddhism. But faith in, the root of faith in English is the trust to wait.

[16:46]

Like you're waiting for somebody and, I trust he'll come. I trust he'll show up. I trust it'll work out. Well, it's rather different than the trust itself. to set forth. But still, neither are the trust as faith as belief. So the faith is, in the Abhidharma, is the clarifying trust that allows you to set forth. And wisdom is a very similar word in the context of the Abhidharma. Wisdom as one of the elements of enlightenment. Concentration, mindfulness, energy, concentration, mindfulness, energy, stillness, equanimity. Now, what the Abhidharma tries to do is to take our experienced world and give us a conceptual antidote

[18:03]

into our experienced world, a way to observe and notice our experienced world, and a kind of craft of noticing our experienced world. So if you want to take this seriously, you say, the aspects of enlightenment, the conditions required for enlightenment are concentration. What the heck does that mean? Mindfulness, equanimity, equalness, energy, zest, and one of them is wisdom. But how do they define wisdom in this context? Wisdom is somewhat similar to the definition of faith. Wisdom is the courage and willingness to investigate states of mind as the path.

[19:07]

We have various states of mind. How do we investigate? How do we have the courage to investigate states of mind? And many of us find when we're practicing and we're beginning to notice the nuances and layering of states of mind, it's kind of fearful to investigate them. But wisdom is an activity again. It's not some kind of state, now he's wise and wizened, but rather It's the courage and willingness to investigate, experience. Another one I like is, you know, the Four Noble Truths. suffering, and then there's the cause of suffering.

[20:12]

And what do they say is the cause of suffering in the Abhidharma, in the context of the Abhidharma? The higher Abhidharma is the higher Dharma, something like that. Yeah. Well, it's craving, and you first look craving, and you think, this is too simple to explain suffering and just the terrors and tribulations of this world as rooted in craving. But again, okay, if we're talking about our experienced, our experienced existence, the experienced world, what do they give as examples of craving? One is, one you can imagine, desire for objects, possessions, pleasure, etc. Yeah. Attachment. That's one. What's the second one? Desire for continued existence.

[21:15]

Now that requires a little bit of... One wants to stop at that one. Desire for continued existence is a cause of suffering. And the third, I give three definitions of craving. And the third is the desire for annihilation, for ending everything. This is, you know, perhaps close to Freud's death wish. But then if you take the Abhidharma seriously, you have to stop and say, okay, I can see the problems with attachment, with possessiveness and so forth. But can I actually imagine a desire, no desire, for craving for continued existence? By the way, thanks for helping Sophia through her little crisis yesterday.

[22:23]

But the first thing I've taught Sophia, taught Sophia, I don't know, in the background of what I say and do with Sophia are a number of things. One of them, the first one is, her first job is to stay alive. Yeah, well, that's what I, in everything I say to Sophia, in the background, there are a number of things, but one of them is, your job is to stay alive. So how does that relate to giving up, imagining no craving for continued existence, no craving for a continuity from moment to moment? Suzuki Rishi says, if in the smallest particles of time, now, the smallest particles of time is an idea, concept, straight out of the Abhidharma. particles of time, experience as appearance, experience as unitary.

[23:36]

Not oneness, but unitary. In the smallest particles of time, if you have no idea of time, So this is again something one can notice. How does our implicit, underneath everything, wanting, assuming, hoping for a continued existence, is it possible to be free of that, momentarily at least free of that? What opens up when, and this you have to find out for yourself, what opens up when you actually have no Interest, no. Desire, attachment to continued existence. I mean, at some moment this is going to be useful.

[24:37]

I mean, you're last. But you can practice by, like, when you go to bed. See if you can go to sleep with no concern with whether you wake up in the morning. Just try it out. What kind of freedom is there? And then notice more subtly in our... is it actually... we also have a desire for craving for annihilation. And that's often zazen. Zazen and sexuality and... disappear. To what extent is this disappearing in zazen without any idea of time, is that also a desire for annihilation? Can we be free of a desire for annihilation, for disappearance and continued existence?

[25:40]

Yeah, one thing I mention every now and then, and it's just recently striking me as more important, is what I would call the craft of yogic seeing. And again, I'll mention it again, which is that you have a sense, you develop a sense a skill, feel for, noticing particulars, and then going to the field, a non-conceptual field, a feeling. It actually awakens the field of mind in contrast to the contents of mind. So you just practice this as a craft. This isn't some white enlightenment or something, but it might help. Just a craft. Probably we wouldn't think of oneself.

[26:55]

It's a craft that's come to over centuries of people trying things out. You notice particulars, and then you have the field. Eventually, the field and the particulars come together non-conceptually. And the more this habit is developed, things open up to you differently. You know, biologically, I mean, we are creating something called the Hebbian synapse, the way, which they say as a kind of cliché, fire together, wire together. In other words, certain experiences cause neuron synapses to fire in a pattern. And if the pattern is different than your usual pattern, you begin to create a pattern. So synapses that fire together, wire together.

[28:01]

It's an oversimplification, I'm told. But when you do something like practice with this yogic way of seeing particulars, the field, particulars, the field, you start wiring yourself differently and biologically wiring yourself differently. And opening up a way to investigate states of mind Way to set forth, set forth as I'm speaking today, rooted in the four elements. Yeah, there's a way of getting over jet lag. Thanks a lot.

[28:48]

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